


Death Star

by Sara_Ellison



Category: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Genre: Gen, Genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:38:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sara_Ellison/pseuds/Sara_Ellison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One survivor was on the planet when the Death Star attacked Alderaan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Star

Maliakus Vel was the new kid. He had arrived at the complex a week ago from Contruum and, displaying remarkable skill for an inexperienced rookie, had been put immediately to work in my unit. He was somewhat naïve, however, and often forgot simple precautions. It was that fault, undoubtedly, that caused him to absentmindedly put the still-active laser welder down on a coolant pipe when he paused in his work to remove the blast shield from his face and wipe the sheen of sweat from his forehead. 

The hiss of escaping gas alerted me to the problem. "Vel! What the--" I yelled, and yanked the welder off the conduit, where it had begun to melt the surface on which it rested. I switched it off and dropped it as I grabbed his arm. A klaxon began to blare as air-quality sensors picked up on the leak, and I bodily threw Vel towards the closing blast doors before diving through them myself. 

I rolled to my feet again outside the workshop, and glanced back through the transparisteel window. The view was starting to become rather misty as the coolant continued to escape from the breach. "Sithspit," I muttered. Vel looked horrified. 

"I am so sorry--" he began, but I waved a hand to cut him off. 

"Don't worry about it. We all make mistakes. You're new, so management shouldn't be too hard on you. Come on, I have to get this leak closed off." I flipped open a panel in the wall next to the window and punched in my access code. On the opposite wall, another panel slid open and revealed a hand-crank. I gestured at it and Vel obligingly began to turn it. I watched the stream of escaping gas become smaller and then disappear. "Good work."

From a locker I pulled an envirosuit. While the coolant flow could be controlled from outside, the room's ventilation system could only be affected from within the room itself. As I started pulling the suit on, Vel moved to take one himself, but I shook my head. "No, you stay here in case anything happens. We're the only two on duty. There has to be one of us to make reports." I patted his shoulder to take the sting out of my words, and he shrugged. I put on my helmet and gloves and pressed a button on my wrist, and the suit's seals activated with a soft hiss.

I punched a panel on the wall and the emergency airlock next to the blast doors opened. I entered and the doors cycled, admitting me into the hazardous workshop. From a locker I selected the tools I needed to repair the pipe, then hit a button to start the ventilators filling the room with clean, breathable air. 

"Hey, An'elbar?" Vel's voice came over the comm speakers in my helmet. "I thought you guys didn't have a moon."

"What?"

"When I came here, I never saw any satellites from the shuttle, and I've never seen a moon from the ground before." 

"That's because we don't have one, Vel. What are you on about?" I had no idea what he was talking about. I glanced through the window into the anteroom and saw him staring at the sky through the exterior window. I looked out through the window on my side. 

"It looks like a moon!" Vel said. "It's a big round thing in the sky, reflecting the sun..."

My stomach jumped into my throat. He was right. There it was, just as he'd said, hanging in the southern sky. I'd never seen anything like it before, although I had heard rumors about a new superweapon. "Why?" I murmured aloud. "Why is it here?" A thought entered my mind and sent shivers of fear down my spine. It was rumored that our young representative in the Imperial Senate was a Rebel sympathizer. Surely His Imperial Majesty had decided we were to be punished for her treason.

I watched, frozen, as a green dagger stabbed down from the giant orbiting body, impacting somewhere to the south. I numbly felt the shockwave from the superheated air as it flattened the complex. I saw a piece of transparisteel shear off Vel's arm at the shoulder as the intense heat cooked him. He died with a look of horror on his face, his eyes showing his sense of betrayal. My suit's automated shield protected me from his fate. 

Then my homeworld exploded beneath my feet as the planet's core evaporated. The sudden pressure of the gases that used to be magma forced everything else outward as Alderaan died. My suit was not a spaceship and had very little in the way of inertial compensation. The forces of sudden acceleration pressed a sheet of blackness across my vision as the piece of land upon which I stood was forced abruptly into outer space. 

 

I became vaguely aware of a spinning sensation. That wasn't right. I forced my eyes open and found myself lying on an asteroid. The chunk of rock was rotating slowly amid a field of similar debris where the planet should have been. My brain rejected that thought. I'll think about it later. Have to get rescued now. I opened a panel on the suit's forearm and pressed a button. A light went on to assure me that the beacon was broadcasting properly. The next ship to enter the system should hear it and respond. I closed my eyes to wait for rescue. There was no sense in spending my time staring into empty space. 

 

The next sensation was one of floating. Had I drifted free of my asteroid? I moved an arm and felt some resistance. That was good. I wasn't in a vacuum anymore. I slowly opened my eyes to a faintly bluish blur. I put my arms out and felt the walls of my transparisteel bacta tank. Beyond, shadowy figures moved about the room. I waved an arm, an exaggerated movement to ensure that it wasn't mistaken for a random drift of my limb, and I was pretty sure one of the figures waved back. Reassured, I drifted back into peaceful, warm unconsciousness. 

 

I woke again, my brain more alert than it had been before. I stayed still for a while, bobbing up and down, but quickly became bored. I reached out a hand and rapped on the side of the tank, getting the attention of one of the figures. He--or she, or it--disappeared around the side of the tank. I felt a tug on my breathing mask and kicked my legs, swimming upward to the surface of the bacta. 

As my head broke the surface, the bacta dripped out of my eyes, causing them to sting mildly in the cool air, but I blinked and the sensation subsided. I hauled myself through the opening onto the grate that covered the rest of the top of the tank, and stood with the assistance of the medtech who awaited me. I pulled the breathing mask off my face and smiled at her. She held onto my arm to make sure my legs, unused to being stood upon, did not give out from under me, as a shower above my head turned on and rinsed the rest of the bacta through the grate back into the tank. The water removed most of the stickiness, but the sickly-sweet taste remained in my mouth. 

The medtech, a rather attractive blonde woman, helped me down the steps from the tank and handed me a soft white bathrobe, then led me to a reclining chair. "Just relax there for a moment," she said as she walked away. 

She returned with two people, a brown-skinned human female and a green-skinned Twi'lek male. They wore what were obviously military uniforms, although I didn't recognize the insignia. I saluted them nevertheless and would have stood, but the medtech placed a hand on my shoulder. 

"How are you feeling?" the human woman asked. 

"Fine, thank you, sir," I answered. 

"Glad to hear it. I'm Commander Liasset. This is Captain Tilwe, and you're aboard his ship, the _Vengeance of Toprawa_. Why don't you tell us a little about yourself?"

I sat up more and cleared my throat. "My name is Barzuj An'elbar," I began. "I'm a mechanic by trade. Civilian. I'm from--was from Alderaan." I fell silent, and, to my horror, felt tears well up in my eyes. I blinked, hard, and went on. "There was a coolant leak. That's why I was wearing the envirosuit...I guess it saved my life." 

"Indeed. You're a lucky man," the Captain said, speaking for the first time. "You only had a few hours left of air when we pulled you in. What a good thing we entered the system just then."

"Yes, sir," I agreed.

"We were hoping you could tell us something about what happened to your planet," Liasset said gently. "We haven't been able to find much information on it."

I sat back and sighed. "I don't know much," I confessed. "Something showed up in the sky--it was huge. Looked like a small moon. Must have had some kind of super-powered laser...it looked like a laser. That's all I saw. Then the planet blew up, and I passed out."

Tilwe and Liasset exchanged a look. Tilwe's braintails twitched briefly, then draped themselves around his shoulders. "It's true, then," he said. "The Empire has their superweapon."

I looked from one to the other. "You're rebels, then? Is it true that Princess Leia Organa is one of you? I think the Empire might have destroyed Alderaan to...to punish her..." I found myself babbling and abruptly shut my mouth, embarrassed.

Liasset nodded. "Yes, that is what we suspect. I'm sorry to say that the Rebellion has recently lost track of her. If the Empire has caught her--"

Captain Tilwe broke in with a question addressed at me. "And what of you? Where do your sympathies lie?"

I thought about it for a moment. "I'm an Alderaanian. We've always been a peaceful world, so I've tried not to take sides." I shrugged. "I've obeyed the Empire's laws, up till now. But they've just destroyed my home. If I wasn't Imperial before, I don't see how I could possibly join them now." I shrugged and smiled wryly at the officers. "Do you have need for a mechanic?"


End file.
